Joshua Davis dreams like most guys. He wants a fun career, exciting adventures, a happy wife who’s proud of him, and really big muscles that strangers can’t help but admire. Too bad he’s a 129-pound data entry clerk whose wife, Tara, has only three simple requests for their life together: direct sunlight, a dining room, and a bathtub.

Since none of these exist in their 250-square-foot San Francisco apartment, Josh sets off on a quest to become the provider his wife wants him to be. The problem is that he does it in a way that most people in their right minds would never consider: he enters the most grueling and unusal contests in the world.

In The Underdog, what begins as a means to get Tara her bathtub evolves into a charming story of courage, adventure, and just a little bit of insanity. On the heels of a fourth-place finish (out of four contestants) in the lightweight division of the U.S. National Armwrestling Championships, Josh gets a spot on Team USA and travels to Poland to face “The Russian Ripper” in the World Championships–and Tara finds herself wishing her husband would go back to data entry. Unfortunately for her, he’s just getting started.

Over the next two years, Josh ventures to Spain to try his hand at bullfighting, sumo-wrestles 500-pound men, perfects his backward running in India and at the Golden Shrimp “retrorunning” race in Italy, and bonds with his family at the Sauna World Championships–because sometimes it takes a blistering 220-degree sauna to bring loved ones together.

By turns hilarious, harrowing, and inspiring, The Underdog documents one man’s ballsy attempt to live the American dream to the extreme.

"A five-foot-nine, 129-lb weakling with a long history of not measuring up, Davis set off in search of unlikely venues in which to discover his athletic gifts, whatever they might be. He entered the U.S. arm-wrestling championship, took up bull-fighting in Spain, squared off against Sumo wrestlers four times his size and nearly scalded himself to death in an extreme sauna competition in Finland. He continued to fail, often spectacularly, but along the way he gained a new appreciation for his wife's eye-rolling devotion and the maturity to master his qualms about fatherhood. Most important for his bourgeoning journalism career, he found a trove of offbeat characters striving for self-respect through bizarre or inappropriate sports, including an Indian backward-running ultra-marathoner whose Guinness Book exploits lifted him from low-caste Untouchability to wealth and status. With an eye for tacky detail and absurdist humor, Davis recounts his hilarious misadventures among these colorful subcultures, but he takes the struggles and triumphs seriously. The result is a funny, beguiling quest that proves that losing is more enlightening-and entertaining-than winning. Photos." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

A riotous and charming true tale, "The Underdog" tells the story of a young journalist's exploration of mankind's obsession with competition and the strange subcultures that encourage it.

Though young, Joshua Davis has accumulated a lifetime of failures. In grade school, he electrocuted himself while trying to construct a fully operational replica of the USS Kitty Hawk in his bathtub. In high school, he started a rock band and at the first and only performance forgot the lyrics of the band’s one song; the group disbanded. After college, Davis directed a feature-length film about a group of friends living in northern California; the movie was bought by a shady distribution company in Nicaragua. The plan: Recoup the investment by showing the indie film on Panamanian buses, The distributor soon declared bankruptcy, never paid for film, and Davis went to work as a data entry clerk at the phone company.

The Underdog is his first book. In the course of writing it, he snuck into Iraq to cover the war for Wired magazine, for which he is now a contributing editor. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, Tara.

Check out the author's website at www.joshuadavis.net